How accurate are food claims? Postmedia consumer reporter Sarah Schmidt found out for her story of the year

Postmedia News reporters recall a story that stood out for them in 2012. Today, Sarah Schmidt reflects:

As a consumer, I make many trips to the grocery store to stock up on food for our family, and when I’m there, I often find myself drawn to certain health claims on the front of food packages, such as “no sugar added,” “no cholesterol” or “very high fibre.”

I read the nutrition facts table on the back of food packages too, because I like to know how much sodium, fat and vitamins are in a product.

As a reporter, I’m interested in how accurate these claims are, and what our food inspection agency does (if anything) when government inspectors discover inaccuracies in nutrition and health claims.

In 2010, I filed an access to information request with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, looking for some of the test results. What I got back was interesting, but it didn’t tell me the whole story. But the records did reveal that for certain food categories, including snacks, candies, and baked goods and breads, at least half of claims tested were inaccurate or considered “non-compliant” with guidelines.

There were no brand and product details, just overall statistics by product category. I wanted to know the brands, so I filed a follow-up request to get the laboratory results of these tests and data for other food types, such as juices and canned goods.

When the records eventually landed, I had more than 900 pages to review. It was tedious at times (I had to take over two desks to organize the documents), but worth it. I discovered that some of the biggest food brands and leading organic labels have understated the amount of bad nutrients – fat, sugar and sodium – in their products, or overstated the amount of good ones.

The story took a long time to pull together, but I’m glad I did it. As a shopper, I’d like to know if a food or nutrition claim is truly accurate.

I've been a Senior Writer at Postmedia News (formerly Canwest News Service) since 2003. I used to cover education, and now I report on consumer affairs (since 2008). I'm based in Ottawa, but I've lived... read more in Victoria, Halifax, Montreal and Toronto (my hometown) for school and work. I didn't plan to become a journalist, but after grad school (to study history), I thought I might want to teach, so went to teacher's college. It was a dreary experience, so I got involved at the campus student paper to get through the school year. I came out of that experience with a third university degree and a job paying less than $10,000 as news editor of The Varsity at the University of Toronto. That was in 1997. I've been writing for a living ever since.View author's profile